Daphne turned around to look at what was threatening her but she was pushed out of the way by Harry who was captured by the headless body of the old woman in her stead.
Before the body of the headless woman could do anything to Harry there was a loud *BANG* with Ethan pulling the trigger on the other Harry who hadn't moved or acted to save Daphne in any way.
Daphne rolled away from the headless body and looked at the resulting situation with a little horror.
The Harry that Ethan had shot at paused and then smiled. Revealing a threatening expression whose effect was further amplified by the shiny bullet between his teeth.
The duplicate Harry pulled out the bullet from between its teeth and left it hanging in the air. The hanging bullet then began to spin at high speeds, making a high-pitched buzz as it spun faster and faster.
Since the bullet was aimed at the other Harry captured by the headless zombie, the duplicate Harry cracked a humorous expression while looking at Ethan.
It was as if he was playing with prey.
Daphne felt her emotions tug.
But both had a sinking feeling of depression and fear.
Ethan was the first to raise a flag of concession, "I will move back as long as you put down the bullet first."
The other Harry's smile only widened as his finger twitched to send the spinning bullet right into Harry's skull but Ethan mimicked its action by almost pulling the trigger.
"I'm serious. Act and I'll blow your head off." Ethan reminded.
But then for the first time, the other Harry spoke. It was a harsh scratchy voice that one would associate with someone using a saw on metal.
"What makes you think I won't catch the second one?"
Ethan's heart sank at what was intended by that line, but he quickly explained the rationale behind his actions.
"If you could always catch them, you'd have caught the one I fired at you earlier when you had to block it with a sofa."
'And I just need to delay him until Laura arrives.'
Everyone in the room saw the other Harry tremble but just when they thought it would put down the bullet, another one floated out of its pocket. This too began to spin with a prominent *buzz* while it was being targeted at Daphne.
Everyone in the room felt a chill travel up their spine.
At that moment everyone heard the main door smash open.
Ethan almost fired his gun and the other Harry almost launched his bullets, stopping only mid-way through their tracks in awkward postures.
Harry and Daphne gulped as they looked at the spinning bullets that were much closer to them, floating only inches off their foreheads.
They heard quick footsteps before a bushy-haired girl entered the room and became stunned at the scene in front of her, while a scholarly boy entered after her.
The sound of a third pair of footsteps followed and soon reached the entrance of the room.
"Do you think they'll be alright in there Loki?" Hermione asked while they stood guard outside the wall of spirituality.
"Why don't you just divine it? Check if it is extremely dangerous for them to be in there." Loki said with a laid-back attitude.
Hermione nodded and performed the divination using her topaz pendulum.
Except both their expressions froze once they saw the result.
The pendulum was spinning clockwise rapidly.
"Tell me you asked if it was super easy and not super hard…" Loki said in a sombre tone.
Hermione shook her head and choked out the words, "Super hard."
Hermione's words only reinforced the trumpet of death, turning it louder as they each thought about it with furrowed expression.
Hermione turned around and immediately ran towards the house but Loki held her back and given how he was a Sequence 6 while she was just a Sequence 9 Hermione was unable to free herself from him.
"Let me go Loki!!! They're in danger!!! Harry's in there!! I can help them!!!!"
"Calm down Mione. Going in there rashly will do nothing good. It's at least a Demigod we're up against. Let's think about it before we do something stupid." Loki said using his charm and thought insertion to make Hermione start thinking rationally.
'Why is she acting so irrationally with Harry?'
Hermione stopped and looked at Loki who was in deep thought as he calmly spoke to her, "Why don't you write a letter to send to Professor McGonagall and Snape."
Loki blew the whistle corresponding to Rowley and had the bird stay with Hermione while she quickly wrote a letter.
In the meantime, Loki began to think about all the idiosyncrasies of this case.
'It grants a wish by consuming a soul…?'
'But the man wanted to sell the coin box in the black market instead of using it. Perhaps he knew about the price of using the box and didn't want to use it? Or maybe he just didn't know how to use it?'
'But upon being discovered the coin box abandoned him and killed him before it left. Given the kind of death, it was most likely by possessing the man.'
'But if it could possess the man and kill him, why didn't it kill the Aurors? Why only choke them and let them go?'
'To let information about it leak?'
'If the coin box was so intelligent in the first place why was it put on sale by a street hawker in the slums? Is it just dumb?'
'Let's not question its intelligence for now…but if that's the case then it almost seems like the coin box was hidden but wants to be noticed now.'
'But for what reason? What changed?'
'Why did the Aurors have the information about the coin box in the first place? If they knew there was a dark item that could trade souls, why wasn't the request fast-forwarded to the unspeakables directly? Or even to us? Why send Aurors?'
'Mismanagement? 'Adam's' doing?'
'There is something missing…'
'Why did a mystical item suddenly want to get noticed when it was hiding so well?'
Loki frowned since he couldn't figure out what gave him a dissonant feeling about everything.
'What in this world would force a person to go into hiding or out of it?'
'Perhaps it gained information about something happening here in Knockturn Alley?'
'Or the Chained God…?'
With that single thought, a series of dominos collapsed in Loki's mind as he emerged at the other end with the solution to everything that was going on.
'How didn't I think of this sooner!'
Loki looked at Hermione and saw she was done writing her letter, but she hadn't sent the letter yet, so he held her back and told Rowley to go away making the little birdie a little disappointed that he wouldn't get to stretch his wings soon.
Loki then looked at Hermione and spoke quickly.
"Let's go in! I think we can still stop this from happening!! It's most likely a misunderstanding!"
"Misunderstanding? Loki! You just said it was very dangerous inside. I'm not going in until you give me a proper explanation! Let's just inform the professors and let's wait for them and Miss Laura! It'll only take them a few minutes to apparate to us."
Loki shook his head and explained calmly, "No Mione! Wait- fine! I'll tell you. The coin box isn't the enemy at all! We've been misled from the start! This is a well-planned trap!"
Seeing Hermione's confused expression Loki explained with an example.
"Just think about this. If you were an evil box that was going to perform a sacrificial ritual, do you think you'd have let the Aurors escape after they found you?"
"Wouldn't killing the Aurors and sacrificing them make the situation worse?" Hermione argued.
"Yes. But no one would know how they died. No more clues about the box. It could just go and hide again until a more suitable time for more hunts."
Hermione nodded, understanding what Loki was getting at.
"And then there are the owners of the box. Although we don't know much about the man, the old woman who we investigated about was said to be a child abuser."
"Yeah, but what about them? I doubt there are any decent people in Knockturn Alley."
"There are two types of Beyonders in the Prisoner Pathway Mione. One that freely expressed their desires and another that keeps a tight leash around them. If our box was of the evil type it would've helped those people, not help the kids by stopping them. Remember~? We heard everyone say the woman no longer came out of the house!"
Hermione frowned, "But what is this about a misunderstanding?"
"The Box! It's trying to bait out Laura!"
Hermione was about to say something else but a soft voice spoke from the side, "Bait me out? Well, I'm here either way, why don't we go in then?"
Hermione breathed a sigh of relief, but Loki became excited as if he'd found something interesting, "You're here! Let's go!!"
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